July 28, 2011

If your holiday snapping demands the versatility of up close macro photography and telephoto zoom in one compact camera then a wide-angle superzoom will likely be at the top of your shopping list. Olympus believes that it has you covered with the announcement of a successor to its SP-800UZ superzoom compact camera. The new model retains the same image resolution and movie quality as its predecessor but gets a zoom boost, gains SDXC and Eye-Fi support and is a touch thinner and lighter. The creativity features also benefit from new additions, including a 3D capture mode and Magic Filter additions.

Olympus is claiming the title of the world's longest zoom lens in a compact camera for its new SP-810UZ. It's been treated to a bit more at the telephoto end than the 36x zoom offered on the chunkier P500 announced earlier this year but is not so ultra-wide - at 24 -864 mm equivalent with an f3.3 (wide) to f5.7 (telephoto) aperture. The lens is made up of 13 lenses configured in 10 groups, including four aspherical lenses.

Like the SP-800UZ before it, the new model has a 14 megapixel CCD sensor, retains the novel shadow adjustment technology that's said to offer images as you see them (no matter the lighting conditions), benefits from tracking autofocus and offers high definition movie recording at 720p resolution. Its Sensor-Shift Image Stabilization works with the camera's ISO80 to ISO1600 sensitivity and speedy shutter action to help keep motion blur in check, with the TruePic III+ image processor taking care of color and noise, too.

Intelligent Auto picks from the five most common photographic scenarios to automatically generate the best shot and in-camera Panorama combines three panned shots into one, although up to ten frames can be automatically stitched together on a computer using the supplied software. New to this release is a 3D capture mode that combines two photos of the same subject from different angles, and the camera's Magic Filter creativity options grow from four to ten, including a new member called "Reflection" that adds a glassy, still lake-like reflection to your subject.

The spacious 2GB of internal memory offered on the previous model has been sacrificed in favor of just 59MB but the camera does now support SD/SDHC/SDXC media card formats and is compatible with Eye-Fi SD card technology. Its included Li-ion battery is said to offer 350 shots between charges and HDMI joins USB for physical connectivity.

The 4.2 x 2.9 x 2.9-inch (107.4 x 72.6 x 73.2 mm) Olympus SP-810UZ weighs 14.3 ounces (405g) minus battery and card and will be available in black only from September for US $329.99.

Amazon is aiming to launch both a 7-inch and 10-inch tablet in the third quarter and is currently lining up the right suppliers, according to the latest from the folks at DigiTimes.

A number of chip design firms in Taiwan expect to see a healthy bump in sales in the third quarter as they ship parts for the new tablets, said Digitimes, citing industry sources. With Amazon shooting to ship 4 million tablets this year, the company's orders for integrated circuits have become the second largest in the industry, behind only Apple's iPad, added the sources.

These latest reports follow a recent story in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the tablet would have a roughly 9-inch screen and would use Google's Android OS but would leave out the traditional camera. The Journal pinned the release date as sometime by October.

The retailer has also tapped Taiwan-based Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) to supply touch sensors for the 7-inch tablet's glass-on-glass touch panels. Such sensors help the tablet detect finger movements. Based on Amazon's target, 2 to 4 million touch panels are expected to ship by the end of September.

CPT's involvement in the new tablet comes through a partnership with E Ink Holdings, which supplies the e-paper used in the Amazon Kindle. Amazon's tablet will reportedly use E Ink's Fringe Field Switching LCD technology for its touch screen, which means it would be a color LCD display.

Amazon itself has remained mum on whether it plans to unveil its first tablet this year. However, in a May interview with Consumer Reports, CEO Jeff Bezos dangled a few hints by advising people to "stay tuned" and promised that if Amazon were to launch a tablet, it wouldn't replace the Kindle but instead be sold alongside it.

You may be forgiven if, at this point, you've never heard of LightSquared. The Virginia-based company has been providing satellite services for over a decade, but was acquired last year by NYC-based hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. This group proposed using LightSquared's spectrum to operate a much more lucrative terrestrial LTE cell phone network for local consumers.

But instead of selling directly to consumers, LightSquared's customers would be small retail carriers that can't afford to build LTE networks to compete against current behemoths Verizon and soon, AT&T. LightSquared's multi-billion dollar proposal received conditional FCC approval in January, but after reports surfaced that its proposed architecture might cripple nearby GPS bands, its future is in question.

With today's deal, LightSquared will pay Sprint $9 billion in cash—$290 million upfront—over the course of 11 years, and offer Sprint $4.5 billion in LTE and satellite purchase credits. Sprint will also have the option to buy up to 50 percent of LightSquared's expected 4G capacity.

The agreement is two-fold for LightSquared. As a result, the network provider will be able to borrow from Sprint's 3G spectrum and offer its customers both 4G and 3G data services. LightSquared will also join Clearwire in renting shelf space from Sprint's multi-mode base stations, called the Network Vision initiative, for its potential 4G network.

In a statement, LightSquared said the deal will let it save more than $13 billion in capital and operating expenses over the next eight years, and complete the development of its 4G LTE network a year early. As such, it has revised its timetable (from the report sent to the FCC on June 30) to launch in major U.S. cities in the second half of 2012 and early 2013.

If you're of the school of cell phone design that leans toward messaging cell phones with full QWERTY keyboards, U.S. Cellular's newest phone is meant for you.

The Samsung Character, released today, features a 2.8-inch QVGA touch screen, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a 1.3-megapixel camera, and of course, Bluetooth support. There's also an onboard music player.

The Character runs on Samsung's custom TouchWiz Lite interface, with three home screens. It costs $39.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate, and is available in blue and gray.

Google's social-networking foray saw fewer U.S. visitors last week, and those who did visit spent less time on the site on average, according to new data released today by market researcher Experian Hitwise.

Google+ had 1.79 million visits for the week ending July 23, a decrease of 3 percent compared with the previous week when the network had 1.86 million visits, Experian Hitwise reported.

The average visit was 10 percent shorter, down from 5 minutes 50 seconds to 5 minutes 15 seconds.

Google declined to comment on specifics of the report but cautioned it's based on the number of visitors and not the number of actual users. Google also said third-party metrics don't factor in two "very critical" modes of interaction, namely mobile usage and navigation bar usage, in which members interact with Google+ from another Google product, such as the drop-down menu while in their Gmail account.

Google+, the Web giant's latest attempt to challenge Facebook for the social-networking crown, launched late last month in a field trial, letting in only a handful of users, who could later invite their friends and family.

Despite this, Google+'s early growth has been meteoric, hitting the 20 million member mark in its first three weeks, according to data released last week by market researcher ComScore. If that data is accurate, Google would have doubled its membership in just one week. Google CEO Larry Page reported on July 14 that the social network had reached 10 million visitors and had received a "ton of activity" with more than 1 billion items shared and received each day.

July 27, 2011

Mobile number crunchers whose laptop keyboard is lacking in a useful separate keypad will no doubt be interested to discover that Canon is about to release a new slim laser mouse which includes its own keypad. The new X Mark I Mouse could also please trackpad haters looking to reduce the number of peripherals housed within the laptop bag, as it also operates as a 10-digit calculator complete with LCD screen.

The X Mark I Mouse is a three-button (including the scroll wheel), 1200 dpi laser mouse that has a number pad where the palm of your hand would gently rest during use. You'll also notice a 10 character LCD screen just above the keypad which gives away the device's third useful function - it's also a calculator. Canon has also sweetened the deal by adding some green credentials to the pot.

The lower casing and battery cover are made from plastic recycled from old Canon copiers. Granted, it's probably not going to win any prizes for ergonomics, but it shines as a space- and time-saver.

The 4.72 x 2.36 x 1.06-inch (120 x 60 x 27 mm) mouse wirelessly connects to a laptop via Bluetooth 2.0 - so you don't even have to worry about blocking up a much-needed USB port with a nano receiver - and is Windows and Mac compatible. It weighs 3.74 ounces (106g) with two AAA-type batteries (included), and comes in either black or white.

Canon says that the X Mark I Mouse will be available from next month for an estimated retail of US$60.

Sony Ericsson is now offering some Xperia X10 owners the chance to upgrade their smartphones to Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

To update the Xperia X10, which was formerly running Android 2.1 Eclair, users need to connect the device to their computers and employ the company's PC Companion software. Over-the-air updates are so far not available.

According to Sony Ericsson, the availability of Gingerbread for user devices "is dependent on operator and/or country," so it cannot provide an "exact date for when the update will be available for you."

Sony Ericsson released the Xperia X10 last year. The device comes with a 4-inch display and 1GHz processor. It has an 8.1-megapixel camera and the ability to record 720p HD video. Last May, Sony Ericsson announced plans to offer Eclair on the device, but that update didn't start rolling out to handsets until October.

At the time, Sony Ericsson didn't plan on bringing Gingerbread to the X10. However, the company said in March that it had "listened to our consumers," and would be bringing the update to the handset, after all.

With the addition of Gingerbread, Xperia X10 owners get Facebook integration across the platform's applications, the ability to use the device as a Wi-Fi hot spot, and tethering. However, users will also lose some features, including the Backup and Restore app and Mediascape. Sony Ericsson also said that contacts and messages saved in the handset's memory will be overwritten.

The average Web-based application is hit by a cyberattack once every two minutes, says a report out today by security firm Imperva.

Detailing its findings in its "Web Application Attack Report" (PDF) for July, Imperva found that Web applications are attacked around 27 times per hour. Monitoring the Internet from December 2010 through May 2011, the security firm uncovered and categorized more than 10 million individual attacks targeting both business and government sites.

Automated cyberattacks accounted for a huge number of attempted breaches. The report discovered that attack traffic was characterized by quick spikes of high volumes followed by longer periods of lighter activity, a key factor pointing to automation. Further, Web sites hit by automated attacks on average received up to 25,000 such attacks in just one hour, or seven attacks each second.

"The level of automation in cyberattacks continues to shock us," Amichai Shulman, Imperva's lead researcher and chief technology officer, said in a statement. "The sheer volume of attacks that can be carried out in such a short period of time is almost unimaginable to most businesses. The way hackers have leveraged automation is one of the most significant innovations in criminal history...Automation will be the driver that makes cybercrime exceed physical crime in terms of financial impact."

Most of the cyberattacks originated in the United States, according to Imperva, with more than 61 percent launched from bots located in the U.S. Attacks from China accounted for almost 10 percent, followed by Sweden and France. Looking beyond just location, 29 percent of the attacks came from the 10 most active sources.

The bad guys are also getting more clever at covering their tracks, noted the report.

"Advances in evasion are also significant," Shulman added. "Our data shows that it is increasingly difficult to trace attacks to specific entities or organizations. This complicates any effort to retaliate, shut down cybercriminal gangs, or identify potential acts of war."

Apple recently released brand-new MacBook Air models and some were disappointed to hear that the slender laptops are still only available in 11-inch and 13-inch versions. There's some good news for those individuals though: Apple may be making some new ultra-thin 15-inch laptops — and it may offer 17-inch models, too!

This 15" Air-esque rumor corresponds pretty well with what we're hearing, but with a few additional tidbits: Chances are these will be the next MacBook Pros, not oversized Airs. There's also a 17" model in the works. And we might see them under Christmas trees, with a few weeks to spare.

On Wednesday, Microsoft delivered to its manufacturing partners the next version of the Windows Phone operating system, code-named Mango, as it looks to reinvigorate its entry in the smartphone space.

Microsoft first showcased Mango in May, and the first phone to sport the updated Windows Phone 7.5 OS was unveiled Wednesday -- the Fujitsu Toshiba Windows Phone ISI12T, which will launch in September.

More are on the way.

"This marks the point in the development process where we hand code to our handset and mobile-operator partners to optimize Mango for their specific phone and network configurations," Terry Myerson, Microsoft's corporate vice president of engineering for Windows phone, wrote on a company blog. "Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process."

Despite generally favorable reviews, Microsoft’s first go at denting Apple and Google’s smartphone dominance last year with the original version of Windows Phone 7 failed to gain momentum. Microsoft captured 2.7 percent of the smartphone market during the first quarter of 2011, according to IDC, versus 7.1 percent in the same quarter a year earlier.

"We've gone from very small to ... very small," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said earlier this month, describing his company's failure to gain real traction against iOS and Android.

Ballmer hopes to change this with the Windows Phone 7.5, a release that offers 500 improvements to the year-old platform, according to the company. New features include a new email “Conversation View,” a “Threads” system to consolidate conversations on different platforms, superior multi-tasking, and an updated Internet Explorer.

"Mango is a substantial improvement bringing multi-tasking and other needed features," Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC, wrote in an email. "This really begins to close the gap and in a couple of ways exceeds its competitors."

But is it enough?

Hilwa believes so: "Microsoft will claw its way to success and market share over the next couple of releases," he said. "Its chances will be helped significantly with a successful Windows 8 release in 2012, which will create synergies between the PC and the phone in new ways."

In June, IDC released a report that claimed Microsoft would overtake Apple's iOS as the second most popular platform by 2015 "as the smartphone market grows and diversifies" -- mainly on the promise of Mango.

Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, is preparing Windows-based handsets to be released later this year.